Banking fraud committed from stolen devices increases by 14%
SAO PAULO (Nov. 4, 2026) — From the second half of 2025 through the first half of 2026, social engineering scam attempts in Brazil increased by 15%. While fake store scams and fake call center scams predictably account for the bulk of those reports, fake lawyer scams have emerged as the third-most prevalent scam type in the country.
“Court records in Brazil are available to the public, giving fraudsters access to case numbers and the personal information of plaintiffs and defendants,” BioCatch Global Director of Fraud Intelligence Thomas Peacock said. “In a fake lawyer scam, the scammer poses as a lawyer and contacts their potential victim via WhatsApp, falsely claiming a favorable ruling has been issued in the victim’s case and that an upfront payment via Pix is required to secure that ruling. We see fake lawyer scam sessions lasting three times longer than legitimate payment sessions. One in five payment attempts linked to a fake lawyer scam occurs while the customer is on an active call.”
The Brazilian banks reporting this data all work with BioCatch, which prevents fraud and scams by recognizing patterns in user behavior. In addition to the spike in scams, BioCatch customers also detected a 20% increase in automated bot sessions and a doubling in remote access fraud attempts.
“In Brazil, the fraud trend that concerns me most is the convergence of social engineering and AI-generated voice deepfakes,” said Patricia Peck, CEO and founder of Peck Advogados. “We are entering the age of synthetic trust, where even a familiar voice can no longer be taken at face value.”
Other key report findings:
The report also includes a case study showing how behavioral intelligence identified a fake lawyer scam in real time.
Click here to download the complete report.
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About BioCatch:
BioCatch prevents fraud and financial crime by recognizing patterns in human behavior, continuously collecting more than 3,000 anonymized data points — keystroke and mouse activity, touch screen behavior, AI agent usage, jailbroken devices, and more — as people interact with their digital banking platforms. With these inputs, BioCatch's AI and machine-learning models continuously assess both user intent and any signs of coercion or manipulation throughout every millisecond of every digital banking session, allowing banks to distinguish the criminal from the legitimate in real time. Insights drawn from across the entire network of BioCatch institutions further amplify the power and accuracy of that real-time risk-scoring. As of the end of Q3 2026, more than 400 financial institutions deploy BioCatch solutions, analyzing 20 billion user sessions per month and protecting more than 760 million users on more than 1.8 billion devices around the world from fraud and financial crime.
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PR contact:
Mac King
BioCatch director of global marketing communications
Mac.King@BioCatch.com